Glossary of Key Internet Marketing Words and Phrases

When you first start marketing your business online, the language can seem alien and sometimes you wish that Google translate had an option to translate internet marketing speak. This is a huge section on this site, and I’ll add to it as I go along, so here are the the words used in internet / online marketing and what they mean.

Above the Fold – The part of a web page that’s visible on a computer screen, without having to scroll down. The term comes from the top part of a newspaper. You will most likely see this as a recommendation that something should be above the fold or below the fold.

Adsense – Google’s advertising space for publishers of ads. The person who publishes the ads gets paid a percentage every time a visitor clicks on that ad. Payments are made by the advertiser to Google, who then pays the publisher.

Adwords – Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising program, in which advertisers bid specific amounts to have their ads appear on pages that are relevant to their keywords.

Affiliate – A person who receives a commission or payment for selling or promoting another company’s products or services. Affiliates are also referred to as associates, partners or referrers.

Affiliate Link – The link that an affiliate receives from a merchant and then places on their website to promote that company’s products. Affiliate sales are tracked through the link, so that the affiliate commission or payment can be calculated correctly.

Affiliate Marketing – A form of marketing in which companies recruit affiliates to promote their products for them in return for a commission or payment for sale, lead or click.

Affiliate Network – A third party website that facilitates the arrangements between companies and their affiliates. Affiliate networks handle the creation of links, payment of commissions, reporting and tracking.

Affiliate Program – The type of arrangement a company creates for its affiliates. Details can include commission rate, amount paid per lead, or amount paid per sale or click. There is usually an affiliate program manager in charge of the program.

Algorithm – The formula that search engines like Google use to determine which results will show up when a search term or keyword is entered into the search field. Search engine algorithms are constantly changing, thus changing what results show up.

Analytics – A service or software that helps you analyze the activity associated with your website or marketing campaigns, such as clicks, visitors, search terms, source of traffic, and popular pages. Google Analytics is one of the most popular services.

Anchor Text – The actual words you click on that link to another page. These are the words contained in a hyperlink that take you to another page.

Article Directories – A website that provides a listing of articles on a variety of subjects. Most articles are submitted for free by authors and can be re-published on other people’s websites, so long as the article is not altered in any way.

Article Marketing – A marketing strategy that involves getting your articles published in as many places as possible around the web or offline, in order to drive traffic to your website. Many people also use this strategy to obtain multiple backlinks to their site.

Autoposting – Any service or tool that automates the process of publishing information to different places on the web. Examples include automated posting of content to your blog, to your social media profiles, or to many places at once.

Autoresponder – An email service that automatically sends emails to a list of subscribers. Emails can be scheduled far in advance or sent out immediately to one or more lists.

Backlinks – Links from other websites that point to pages on your own websites. These are often seen as “votes” in favor of your website and are an important part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Banned – A website or page is ‘banned’ from a search engine’s results when it is seen to violate that search engine’s rules. If your site is banned, it will not show up in any results when someone searches for your information.

Banner Ads – Image ads that are placed on websites. Banner ads come in a variety of sizes and shapes and can be placed anywhere on a web page.

Bio Box – Your bio box is a short blurb at the end of an article that gives a brief overview of who you are. It is a place where most publishers allow you to put a link back to your site or sales page.

Black Hat – Black Hat refers to SEO tactics that involve trying to trick search engines into putting your website higher in their results. The opposite term is White Hat SEO, which involves completely legal and honest methods. Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to defeat the efforts of black hat methods.

Blog – Short for “web log”, a blog is an online journal in which you can publish ongoing information and articles (also called “posts”). Used as a way to keep in touch with customers and readers, the act of “blogging” has become an essential part of marketing your business.

Browser – An online service that allows you to view and read web pages on the internet. Web pages are located by typing in the address or URL of that website into your browser. The most popular browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (for Mac).

Captcha – Captchas are the code that people need to enter before they are able to submit a comment, email or other information into a form on the web. They often consist of the little boxes with funny looking letters that you need to decipher to show that you are human and not a robot that is trying to trick the search engines.

Churn – Also referred to as turnover, churn is the rate at which you lose subscribers or customers and replace them with new ones.

Clicks – Clicks are simply the number of times a person “clicks” on a hyperlink on a website, email, document, or anywhere else that a link appears.

Click-Through-Rate (CTR) – The percentage of visitors to a page who click on a specific link on that page in order to get to another website. It is measured by dividing the number of clicks by the number of times that web page is viewed (number of impressions).

Content Management System (CMS) – A software or service for publishing and managing the organization of your content, including text, images and ads. The most popular CMS is currently WordPress.

Contextual Advertising – The process in which ads are chosen to be placed on web pages based on the relevance of the content on that page. Ideally, viewers only see ads that fit within the context of what they are reading.

Conversion Rate – The percentage of visitors to your site who become customers. It is calculated by dividing the number of sales by the number of visitors to that page.

Cookie – Cookies are small pieces of code that are placed on your web browser to track your activity and preferences. They can store your passwords, personal details or other information. They are also the way in which affiliate networks are able to track visitors who return to your site to click on your affiliate link.

Cost-per-Action (CPA) – A method of advertising in which the advertiser pays a specific amount for an action that a visitor takes, such as signing up for a newsletter, filling in a form, or making a purchase.

Cost-per-Click (CPC) – A form of advertising in which the advertiser pays a specific fee every time a visitor clicks on their ad. Also called pay-per-click (PPC).

Cost-per-Thousand (CPM) – CPM refers to the cost an advertiser pays for every thousand impressions, the times that an ad is displayed on a website.

Crawler – A computer program, also called a robot or spider, which search engines use to find and index website content. Your website is crawled at regular intervals to find new or changed pages which are then stored in the search engines database.

De-indexed – Your page or site is de-indexed when the search engines temporarily or permanently remove it from their listings.

Domain name – The name that identifies your website in your url. It’s the part that goes between the http://www. And the .com, .net, .org or any other extension.

Double opt-in – As part of an email subscription sign-up, many autoresponders give you the option to require people to confirm their subscriptions by clicking on a link in an initial email. This is a double opt-in, since people have to perform two actions to subscribe. It is recommended for avoiding any spam complaints.

Duplicate Content – Duplicate content technically refers to content that appears on more than one page in the same website. People also use it to refer to content that is the same across more than one website.

eBook – A book that is delivered in a digital format that can be downloaded onto your computer or reader device.

eCommerce – Any form of online selling of products. A department store’s online website is called an ecommerce store.

eCourse – A training or learning series that is delivered digitally. These are usually delivered via your email.

Email marketing – A method of marketing your business or products through an email campaign, which usually consists of a series of emails to your list of subscribers.

Email signature (sig file) – A message that is automatically included at the end of each of your emails.

EzineArticles – One of the most well-known online electronic magazines (ezines). It is used by many authors and marketers for widening their reputation and driving traffic to their websites through article marketing.

FAQ – Short for “frequently asked questions”, an FAQ page lists the most common questions and answers that people ask. Many companies have FAQ pages on their sites to help customers without having to personally answer the same questions over and over.

Forum – A place where people can discuss different topics, ask questions and share ideas. They are usually found on related websites on a specific topic and can be either free or paid membership.

Foursquare – A social network platform in which people can let their friends know where they are at any one point in time.

Fresh content – The new content that you add to your website or blog on a regular basis. Search engines love to see a constant flow of fresh content being posted on your site.

Google Places – A local listing of companies. It’s essential make sure your local business is added to the Google places listing with the correct location.

Guest Blogging – Writing and posting articles on other people’s blogs. This has become a very effective marketing method for spreading your name and driving targeted readers to your website from related blogs.

Hits – A request that a web server makes for a single file. Since a web page may contain several files, each file is counted as a hit. So, one web page with 2 images would count as 3 hits (1 for the page and 2 for the images). Most people consider hits a poor estimate of traffic to a page.

Home Page – The main page that people come to when they type in your web address. This is also called your “landing page”.

Hosting Service Provider – A company or individual that provides space on their server (computer) for your website files. The host gives people the ability to access your website via the internet.

HTML – Short for hypertext markup language, html is the most common code used for creating web pages today.

Indexed – Your page or site is considered indexed when the search engines add it to their database and search listings. It can’t show up in results until it has been indexed.

IP Address – A unique number that represents each individual computer. It is your computer’s personal internet “address”.

Keyword – The search term that people enter into a search engine to find information. For example, if you are looking for places to buy grills, you might type in the keyword “places to buy grills”.

Keyword density – A measure of the number of times a keyword appears on a page. It is calculated by dividing the keyword by the number of words on a page. If you have a very high keyword density, search engines might think that you are trying to trick them. This tactic is also called “keyword stuffing”.

Keyword optimization – Ensuring that each of your website’s pages has its target keyword in all tags, headers, and in strategic locations in your text. Each page on your site should be optimized for a different keyword. Good keyword optimization helps the search engines find that page and contributes to good rankings in results.

Keyword tool – A keyword research tool gives you the ability to look up statistics on different keywords, including the number of times it was searched for and the number of other web pages or sites that are optimized for that word.

Links – Clickable text or images that take you to another website or page on the internet.

Lifetime value – The lifetime value of a customer refers to the predicted or average amount of revenue you generate from one customer.

Link building – The process of building links between different websites and pages. The actual number of links to your site that come from other websites often determines your “link popularity” in the search engines’ eyes, since each one is a vote for you.

LinkedIn – A social network geared primarily for business professionals.

Local search – Searches on the internet that contain specific local terms, such as a city or region name. For example, a local search term could be “Chinese food restaurants in Minneapolis”.

Long-tail keywords – Keyword search terms that are several words long. These are often the least competitive and easier to rank for.

Meta tags – Information about your site or page that appears to search engines but does not appear on the page itself. This information tells the search engines what your site is about, therefore it is important to have your keywords in your tags.

Mobile marketing – A method of marketing that involves advertising to customers on their mobile devices, such as smart phones.

Offline marketing – The use of more traditional methods of marketing that do not involve online technology. Seminars at a local business are one example of offline marketing.

Opt-in – The process in which people input information in order to subscribe to an email list. People can also “opt-out” to remove themselves from the list.

Organic Search Results – All the results that appear when you type in a search term that do not include paid ads. These are the unpaid listings.

Pinterest – A social network in which people can “pin” images or videos to their own virtual bulletin boards. These images link back to their source and people can “repin” the images from one person’s board to their own.

Pop-up – A type of ad, opt-in box, or other message that automatically appears on your screen on top of what you are currently viewing. Often these are used to capture email addresses.

Pay-per-Click (PPC) – A type of advertising campaign in which the advertiser pays a specific amount each time someone clicks on their ad.

Pay-per-Lead (PPL) – A type of advertising in which the advertisers pays a specific amount for each lead they obtain. These could include email signups, surveys completed, or signups for free trials.

Pay-per-Sale (PPS) – Advertising campaigns in which the advertiser only pays when a sale is made. These are a common form of affiliate program.

Reciprocal Linking – A link building strategy in which one site links to another in return for the other site linking back to theirs.

Resource Box – The information placed at the end of an article which gives information about the author or other resources the reader can access. Good resource boxes are essential for effective article marketing.

Return on Investment (ROI) – A measure of how well your business is performing compared to what you invested. It is calculated by dividing your net income by your total costs and multiplying by 100 to get a percentage.

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) – A regularly updated list of published online information from a website, also called a “feed”. By subscribing to a blog’s RSS feed, you can get regular delivery of their posts via a “feed reader” without having to visit the site itself.

Sales page – A web page that is set up just for the purpose of selling a product.

Sandbox – The Google sandbox is the virtual location your web page or site is placed when it has been banned or deindexed. Sometimes it reappears and sometimes it doesn’t.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The process of setting up a website and each page in a site in a way that makes it most likely to get found and ranked by search engines. This mainly involves choosing good keywords and placing them in the correct tags and locations on each page.

Social Media – Online sites where people network, share information and socialize. This includes places like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr.

Social Media Management – Methods for managing all of your different social media sites and the content you publish on them. There are both software tools and companies that provide ways to manage your social media interactions and marketing.

Spam – The junk mail of the internet, spam refers to unwanted or unsolicited email that is often sent in bulk to advertise products or services.

Squeeze Page – A web page that is set up specifically to gather email information and subscribers. They usually offer some type of free giveaway in order to “squeeze” the information from the visitor.

Target Market – The specific group of people to whom you are selling your products and services. A target market should be clearly defined according to demographics, needs, preferences, interests, and other relevant characteristics.

Text Link – A link that only consist of words that you can click on to take you to another web page.

Tracking Method – The method used to track visitors, clicks, sales, leads or other information about activity on your site or about marketing campaigns you are conducting.

Traffic – The number of visitors to your web page or site.

Tumblr – A popular free blogging platform that allows you to set up a free blog, post text and images, and share both your posts and those of others. It is one of the bigger social networking sites.

Twitter – A social networking site in which people post very short updates and links, no more than 140 characters long.

URL – Your URL (uniform resource locator) is the full address of a web page, including all extensions beyond the .com, .net, .org, .gov, etc.

Viral Marketing – A marketing method which involves creating interesting content and encouraging others to share it across the web. When a piece of content “goes viral” it can appear in thousands and thousands of places throughout the internet.

Visitors – The number of people who arrive at a web page. These can either be repeat visitors or unique visitors (those who have come there for the first time).

Web Design – The art of designing the look and feel of web sites.

Website – The full collection of all of the pages on your domain, whether it is a blog or other platform.

WordPress – One of the most popular blog software programs. Many people create individual WordPress blogs as their main website and business.